Oct
13
Pingdom terminates me
A while ago, on recommendation of a friend, I decided to try out Pingdom. It is, in essence, a monitoring tool that is actually well executed. The plethora of features are impressive and their client list is impressive.
Naturally, I decided to sign up for the generous free trial. We tried it out for a while and decided it wasn’t exactly for us. We don’t run anything that was mission critical and we felt we had no need to move to a paid account (even though it was quite affordable). However, we are soon to release a new web-based product, where uptime was a critical issue and I was contemplating whether I should move to the paid Pingdom plan in the next month.
That is, until I received their “your trial has ended e-mail”.
Your Pingdom trial account has been terminated
Hi Sarat Pediredla,
Your Pingdom trial account has been terminated. You can no longer log in to the Pingdom control panel, upgrade your account, or view any of your reports.
Thank you for your time with Pingdom.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us at xxxxxx@pingdom.com if you have any questions.
Best regards,
The Pingdom Team
www.pingdom.com
I don’t claim to be a copywriter and neither am I going to criticise the tone of the e-mail (which is evident). However, I will say that it is a pity that such a good service should be marred by someone’s haste in writing these all-important e-mails. What could have been used as a great retention opportunity has been squandered by the use of some pretty harsh words like “terminated” (who except Arnold Schwarzenegger can make that sound cool?) and “you can no longer log in”.
Instead, why not offer customers an incentive to join or allow them to log-in and export or retrieve their reports (giving them a grace period before the account becomes inactive). What is even worse is that I cannot “upgrade my account”, so how exactly do Pingdom expect me to pay them money for their service? Do I have to sign-up again? Do I have to crawl on my knees to Pingdom and beg them to let me back in?
So here is a tip; use every e-mail you send to the customer to enhance your relationship and provide them opportunities to engage with you. At the least, make them feel good. For God’s sake, do not terminate them!
posted by Sarat Pediredla on October 13, 2007 at 11:55 a.m.
